From the archives: After years of stand-up, McCarthey sips the rewards of a Hollywood deal

This story was published June 3, 2000. Read an appreciation of McCarthey’s life here.

It’s a glorious spring afternoon. But David John McCarthey is consumed with matters far more metaphysical. He’s rhapsodizing about premium single-malt scotches on his bar stool at Hurley’s Pub. ”Look at the magnificent amber quality,” he marvels while fondling his snifter of one 18-year-old elixir. ”Smell the bouquet that is released with the addition of just three teardrops of water.”

Ah, ain’t life grand?

Ten years ago, McCarthey would have been ranting about malted milk gone south. Times change. Success can do that to even the most earthy of local comedians.

This has been a banner year for the 34-year-old McCarthey. After working on the comedy fringes and paying dues the last 14 years, McCarthey’s chariot appears to have come in. The native of Pierrefond’s rough-and-tumble Ama Baie region – who has been oft mistaken for a member of the Belushi brood – has just sold, with ex-Montrealer crony John Rogers, a script to a major Hollywood production house. The company that produced Godzilla, Independence Day and the soon-to-be-released Patriot with Mel Gibson has signed a deal with the guys that will pay them in the mid-six figures just for an option on the property. When the film is shot, that sum becomes a high six-figure number.

To put it all in perspective, McCarthey could bathe in 25-year-old Macallan should he so desire. ”It’s all part of a master strategy I worked out a few years ago,” says McCarthey – D.J., Deej, or John, but never David, to his buddies. ”I resolved to drink better, but to drink less.”

Yes, but about the film? McCarthey has been sworn to secrecy about revealing anything other than it is ”a high-concept, big-budget heist flick.”

The project evolved about six months ago. McCarthey was on the conch with Rogers, the former writer and associate producer of the Cosby Show and a dynamite stand-up in his own right. Rogers, now based in L.A., was seeking some input from McCarthey on a sci-fi script he was completing. Out of the blue, McCarthey uttered two lines about a film concept that were about to change his life.

Rogers took those two lines to the Hollywood production company, and a deal was struck shortly thereafter.

”I still can’t believe they bought it on just two lines,” McCarthey says. ”There wasn’t a dot of ink on paper.”

Now there is. McCarthey and Rogers are diligently at work – through the miracle of long-distance communication – completing the script, which must be delivered in September.

Fortunately for McCarthey, he left the negotiating to Rogers and his manager. ”Every time the company floated a number, I told them to take it,” McCarthey recalls. ”They’d say no, that we could do better. And we did.”

The deal is all the more impressive since McCarthey is a first-time screenwriter. But like Rogers, who is also doing a cartoon series with Jackie Chan, McCarthey learned long ago that man cannot live on Montreal comedy clubs alone. He, along with Rogers and Brad McKenna, have a Montreal-based production company, Kulkenny & Tartan, churning out TV comedy and magic specials, sitcoms and a feature film, in addition to live comedy spectacles.

Nor has McCarthey forsaken his comedy roots. He has finally landed a gig at a Theatre St. Denis gala at this year’s Just for Laughs festival. At previous fests, he had done everything but, including the Montreal Show.

It gets better: McCarthey is set to tape a one-hour solo special to air on the Comedy Channel and CTV in the fall.

And he just returned from a plum engagement in Vegas, where he did 16 shows in seven days at the Riviera with members of his Montreal rat-pack: Rogers, David Acer and Barry Julien.

”It shouldn’t be: All You Can Eat. It should be: All You Should Eat.” The aforementioned are his recollections of the trough they call Las Vegas.

Any other thoughts? ”Yeah. Hard Lemonade. What’s that all about? I want to get drunk and I want to feel like I’m 4. I don’t think so.”

Anything else? ”Yeah. Embarrassed though I may be, I just discovered that vodka came from potatoes. How, for the last 500 years, did the nation of Ireland miss that?”

And how did this magical ride all begin for McCarthey? About 14 years ago, his bigger, more diabolical older brother physically forced McCarthey onstage to do stand-up, for he feared his younger sibling had no other career prospects. ”I’ve hated him ever since,” says McCarthey, who still performs at least 200 nights a year at comedy clubs and conventions around the continent.

And thanks to his brother, McCarthey has a problem he never had before: taxes. ”I have a tax lawyer now,” he mutters.

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